SECTION III.

HIEROGLYPHICS IN BRITAIN.

IN his Treatise of the "New Manneris and the Auld of Scottis," the ancient chronicler Boece says the old inhabitants "used the rites and manners of the Egyptians, from whom they took their first beginning. In all their secret business they did not write with common letters used among other people, but with cyphers and figures of beasts made in manner of letters."

He is unable to tell how the secret of this crafty method of writing was lost, but affirms that it existed and has perished. We know the principle of Ideographic writing was extant in what are termed the Tree-Alphabets, in which the sprigs of trees formed the signs. Taliesin alludes to this kind of writing when he says, "I know every reed or twig in the cave of the chief Diviner," and "I love the tops of trees with the points well connected;" these were the symbolical sprigs used for divination and as ideographs before they were reduced to phonetic value. The language of flowers is a form of the same writing.

In the time of Beli the Great, say the Welsh traditions, there were only sixteen "AWGRYMS" or letter-signs, and these were afterwards increased to twenty and finally to twenty-four. One account states that in the first period of the race of the Kymry the letters were called "YSTORRYNAU." Before the time of Beli-ap-Manogan there were ten primary YSTORRYN or YSTORRYNAU, which had been a secret from everlasting with the bards of the Isle of Britain. Beli called them letters, and added six more to the earlier ten. The sixteen were made public but the original ten YSTORRYNAU were left under the seal of secrecy. It will be suggested hereafter that Beli is the Sabean Baal, the first son of the mother who in Egypt was Bar-Sutekh (Sut-Anubis), the earliest form of Mercury, who became the British Gwydion called the inventor of letters; that Gwyd is Khet or Sut, and that the same original supplied the Greeks with their Kadmus, who is also accredited with introducing the sixteen letters into Greece.

But at first there were only ten primary letters or YSTORRYNAU. Now in Egyptian "TERU" is a type name for drawing, writings, papyrus rolls, stems, roots, literature, the "rites" of Taht, the divine scribe. Nau (Nu) denotes the divine or typical. Ys is the well-known Welsh prefix which augments and intensifies. There were ten of these branches on the first tree of knowledge. Kat (Eg.) is the name of the tree of knowledge. That is our British Kêd, who is the tree, and Kat or Kêd reappears as the Gwyd or wood of the Druids. The typical tree of Kêd or Ogyrven, one of her two chief characters, was an apple-tree, on which the mistletoe, the divine branch, is often found growing, and this gave the type name to the tree of knowledge with the British Barddas. Taliesin says seven score Ogyrvens pertain to the British Muse.1 The brindled ox of Hu had seven score knobs on his collar. The number of stones in the complete temple of Stonehenge has been computed at seven score. The "Avallenau," or apple-trees, were the wood of the tree of knowledge, and these are represented as being 147 in number. From a poem written by Merddin we gather that there was a garden or orchard containing 147 apple-trees or sprigs, which could be carried about by him in all his wanderings. The bard bemoans that the tree of knowledge and the shoots have now to be concealed in the secresy of a Caledonian wood. The tree still grows at "the confluence of streams the two waters, but has no longer the "raised circle" and the protective surroundings of old. The Druids and their lore are being hunted to death by the Christians, the "Men in black." Merddin and a faithful few still guard the tree of knowledge although their persecutors are now more numerous than their disciples. This tree of knowledge has seven score and seven shoots or sprigs, composing the whole book, and these may now be claimed as ideographs and hieroglyphics which deposited their phonetic values in the tree alphabets. Thus the tree of knowledge the KAT (Eg.), the Welsh GWYD is the representative of the mother Kêd, who is identified by Taliesin with Ogyrven.2

Ogyrven has an earlier form in Gogyrven, and Khekr (Eg.) means to adorn, a collar, or necklace, which in the lunar reckoning had ten points or branches as is implied in the name of Menat. Afterwards the collar worn by the mother Isis had nine points or beads according to the solar reckoning. Ogyrven is one of two characters of Kêd and Keridwen the other. When interpreted by the doctrine of the Two Truths, these are identical with the divine sisters, Neith and Nephthys. KHARIT (Eg.) means the widow. Keridwen is the widow lady in the mystical sense. She was the one alone. Ogyrven is called Amhat, she like Nephthys is the goddess of seed, or the seeded (Neft). It is in keeping that Gogyrven (Ogyrven) means some kind of spirit. 1 Preiddeu Annwn. 5. 2 Skene, Four Ancient Books of Wales, ii. 154.

Breath was the first spirit and this was the mother of breath, the other of the water.

In the chapters on the Typology of Time and Number, it will be shown how the tree of knowledge put forth its ten branches. It was

at a time when the number ten was reckoned on both hands. In Egyptian Kabti is two arms. Khep is the hand and ti is two, thus Khepti or Khep,, which becomes Kat and Kêd, is equivalent to both hands or ten digits. The Ogam alphabet is digital, and five of its digits read Qv (Welsh), that is Khef (Eg.) one hand. Two hands or ten digits then represent the tree of Kêd, or Kat called knowledge. And as the ten digits were a primary limit it may be conjectured that the ten original YSTORRYNAU were represented by the ten first signs of the Ogam alphabet, the ciphers spoken of by Boece.

A document on Bardism cited by Silvan Evans,1 says the three so-called "beams" were the three elements of a letter. These three consist of the right hand, left hand, and middle, and that from these were formed the sixteen Ogyrvens or letters. If we reduce the sixteen to the earlier ten we have the ten digits. And these mystical strokes include a right-hand one and a left-hand one. They are a figure of the Triad consisting of the one, who was the Great Mother, with two manifestations, whether these two were the two sisters, the twin brothers, or the dual IU, the young God. The Barddas assert that the three strokes, beams, or "shouts" rendered the name of the deity as IAU the younger. These emanated from the hieroglyphic Eye, to form the name that is one with the AU or IU of Egypt. They represented the "CYFRIU" name of the Trinity, or the thricefunctioned HU, says Myfyr Morganwg.2 Khpr-iu as Egyptian would denote the transformation of the one into the Duad, and this meaning has been preserved in the "Cyfriu" sign of the Druids. Also Gafl in Welsh is the fork; GEVEL (Breton) is dual. The two hands, the ten branches of the one tree of knowledge then, were a dual symbol of KAT, KÊD, or KHeft.

The number seven is the base of the seven-score and seven branches, and in Egyptian the word Khefti or Hepti also means number seven. Thus the seven and ten meet in one word, because the ti may be read as two or as twice. Khep is the hand and Seb is five, thus Seb-tifive-two-is seven, and Kepti, or Khefti, is two hands, or number ten. When this tree of knowledge is recovered it will be seen that the Druids possessed it, root and branch.

TERUU (Eg.) denotes branches and stems, we may say, of the tree of knowledge, and it is also the name of drawings and of papyrus rolls. The first Ystorrynau were the branches of the hands, the ten digits; then the branches of the tree were sprigs of trees. Now in the old Egyptian stage of speech the words are isolated, and there is no distinction between the root and stem. The word stands for the thing 2 Vide Letter.

1 Skene's Four Ancient Books of Wales, ii. 324.

rather than the thought because the thinkers were the THINGERS, and they who used the word as bare root had to obtain their variants by pointing to still other things. These variants were not represented by kindred words but by ideographic determinatives. It is here we have to look for the cognates, the branches, so to say, of the root. These were expressed in pictures, in gestures, and in tones, before the verbal variants were evolved. So the Grebos of Africa are still accustomed to indicate the persons and tenses of the verb by gesture signs. The Druidic sprigs belong to this ideographic stage. They were both the typical and the literal branches of speech in British hieroglyphics.

It is noticeable that the Damara tribes of Africa are subdivided into a number of EUNDAS (Clans or Ings) as the Sun-Children, MoonChildren, Rain-Children, and other Totemic types, and each Eunda has a sprig of some tree for its emblem. The Druidic sprigs, based on the number seven and extending to seven-score seven, doubtless originated in the same primary kind of heraldry, and their phonetic deposits are, as said, the tree alphabets.

In connection with the British TORRYNAU, it may be remarked en passant that, according to Eliphas Levi (nom de plume of the Abbé Constant), in his History of Magic, there is a hieroglyphic alphabet in the TAROT cards; these were distinguished from cards by the license of the French dealer who sold "Cartes et TAROTS," There is a Kabalist tradition that the TAROT was invented by Taht the originator of types. These cards are still preferred by fortune-tellers. The name, if Egyptian, connects them with magic and divination. Ter or tri is to interrogate, invoke, question. Ut is magic, TAR-UT therefore means magical evocation; magic applied to "TRYING the spirits" or evoking them. Also TERUT signifies the teru (Eg.) or coloured drawings, with the determinative of the hieroglyphist's pen and paints. The Tarot cards when interpreted by the Kabalist tradition were Terut or hieroglyphical drawings. The Druids were in possession of the symbolic branch for the type of the youthful Sun-god, who was annually reborn as the offshoot from the tree. The mistletoe was their branch that symbolized the new birth at the time of the winter solstice. All its meaning is carefully wrapt up in its name. Mes (Eg.) is birth, born, child. Ter is time, and a shoot, which was the sign of a time. Ta is a type, also to register, the Mis-tel-toe is the branch typical of another birth of time personified as the child, the prince, the branch; prince and branch being identical, a form of the branch of the Panygeries on which Taht the Registrar registered the new birth of the Renpu. The branch in Welch is PREN corresponding to RENPU (Eg.) the shoot sign of youth and renewal. The branch of mistletoe was called PREN PURAUR the branch of pure gold, and Pren UchelvaR. It had five names derived from Uchel the Lofty. The word will yield more meaning.

The Lofty was the tree, the aak or oak, and Al (Eg.) is the child or son of; the mistletoe was at times born of the oak.

The hieroglyphic shoot is well preserved in the Mayers' song in celebrating their form of the branch

"It is but a sprout,

Yet it's well-budded out."1

The shoot or RENPU is carried in the hands of Taht, the god of speech, of numbering and naming, who is the divine Word in person. From the branch the Druids derived their Colbren, the wood of credibility, the staves on which their runes were cut. BREN is a later form of PREN. PREN is the REN, just as PREF, the snake, is the REF. The REN is the branch, and ren (Eg.) means to call by name. Coel answers to Kher (Eg.) the word, to speak, utterance, speech, voice. Thus the Colbren is the branch of the word, the wood of speech, identical with the REN (renpu) of Taht, and the emblem of that branch which was the word or Logos impersonated as the British DOVYDD.

The palm is the typical trée of time and of letters, a form of course of the tree of life and knowledge; it is the symbol of reckoning time. In Egyptian it is named BUK or BEKA, the original of BôKA (Gothic), and the English BEECH. In Persian the oak is named BUK. The trees may be various, the name is one on account of the type. The palm-shoot was the book of the scribe, and the beech-tree is the book-tree, because its bark was used for inscribing upon. The Buka or palm-branch on which time was reckoned finally yields us the name of the book.

One of the types of Palm Sunday is the cross made of palmbranches. In the northern counties Palm Sunday is a day of great diversion, old and young amuse themselves in making crosses to be stuck up or suspended in houses. In the latter part of the day the young of both sexes sally forth and assault all unprotected females whom they meet with, seizing their shoes, which have to be redeemed with money. On Monday it is the turn of the men, who are treated in the same manner.2

The palm cross primarily represents the Crossing, not the crucifixion, and is the same symbol of the equinoctial year as it was in the hands of Taht or An, as the sign of a time.

In the unavoidable quotation from Pliny we are told "the Druids (so they call the wise men) hold nothing in greater reverence than the MISTLETOE, and the tree on which it grows, so that it be an oak. They choose forests of oaks, for the sake of the tree itself, and perform no sacred rites without oak leaves, so that one might fancy they had even been called for this reason, turning the word 1 Brand, May-Day Customs. 2 Dyer, 133.